Ike Kunze, M.Sc.
Researcher
| Ahornstraße 55, building E3 52074 Aachen Germany | |
| 9017 | |
| +49 241 80-21422 | |
| ike.kunze@comsys.rwth-aachen.de |
Overview
Short Biography
After receiving my M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from RWTH Aachen University with honors, I joined the Chair of Communication and Distributed Systems at RWTH Aachen University as a researcher and Ph.D. student in January 2019.
Research
My research centers around leveraging the capabilities of novel programmable networking hardware for improving network performance. For example, I am interested in approaches targeting network buffers and queues (AQM), network monitoring, as well as transport protocols and congestion control.
As part of my current position in the excellence cluster Internet of Production, I further study the applicability of in-network computing concepts to networks with strict requirements, e.g., the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or the industrial production domain. In this context, I also contributed to the IRTF COIN research group.
Awards
My Ph.D. research was recognized by the RWTH Profile Area Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with the 2024 ICT Young Researcher Runner-Up Award.
Our paper on the congestion control behavior of instant-messaging video conferences was a top-3 paper at the TMA Conference 2023.
For my contributions to the EuroSys 2021 Shadow PC, I was awarded the Distinguished Shadow PC Reviewer Award.
Our paper on content provider fairness was the best paper runner-up at the TMA Conference 2019.
Working With Me
I regularly advise a number of theses on various topics, supervise team projects, and work closely together with my Hiwis. The following (non-exhaustive) list provides an overview of topics and positions that I currently offer. I usually also have additional topics available that I do not find the time to publish.
Thesis Topics — Team Projects — Hiwi Positions
- All topics have already been assigned and all hiwi positions have been filled.
Interested in one of the available topics or positions?
Then please email me a couple of sentences on your motivation for working on the topic and a recent transcript of records.
No open topics?
Please have a look at my publications and advised theses to see if my research field is generally interesting for you.
It is?
Then also email me a couple of sentences on which aspects / theses / papers you find most interesting and your motivation for working in this field — if you follow these instructions, we might figure out a suitable thesis topic together.
Publications
Cascades of Nested Acknowledgments in Multi-Hop MASQUE.
Proceedings of the ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop 2025 (ANRW ‘25), Jul 22, 2025, Madrid, Spain. July 2025.
Using Explicit (Host-to-Network) Flow Measurements for Network Tomography.
Proceedings of the ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop 2025 (ANRW ‘25), Jul 22, 2025, Madrid, Spain. July 2025.
Reducio: Data Aggregation and Stability Detection for Industrial Processes Using In-Network Computing.
Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-based Systems (DEBS ’25), Jun 10 - Jun 13, 2025, Gothenburg, Sweden. June 2025.
ConfMod: A Simple Modeling of Confidentiality Requirements for Inter-Organizational Data Sharing.
Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Management for Industry 5.0 (MFI5.0 ‘25), May 12, 2025, Honolulu, HI, USA, co-located with the 2025 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS '25). May 2025.
Advancing Network Monitoring with Packet-Level Records and Selective Flow Aggregation.
Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS ‘25), May 12 - May 16, 2025, Honolulu, HI, USA. May 2025.
Congestion-Responsive Queuing for Internet Flows.
Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS ‘25), May 12 - May 16, 2025, Honolulu, HI, USA. May 2025.
VGPrio: Visually Guided HTTP/3 Prioritization.
Proceedings of the 2025 IFIP Networking Conference (NETWORKING 2025), May 26 - May 29, 2025, Limassol, Cyprus. May 2025.
Madtls: Fine-grained Middlebox-aware End-to-end Security for Industrial Communication.
Proceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIA CCS ‘24), Jul 1 - Jul 5, 2024, Singapore, Singapore. July 2024.
In-Situ Model Validation for Continuous Processes Using In-Network Computing.
Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS ‘24), May 12 - May 15, 2024, St. Louis, MO, USA. May 2024.
SpinTrap: Catching Speeding QUIC Flows.
Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS ‘24), May 6 - May 10, 2024, Seoul, Korea. May 2024.
Does It Spin? On the Adoption and Use of QUIC’s Spin Bit.
Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC ‘23), Oct 24 - Oct 26, 2023, Montreal, Canada. October 2023.
ECN with QUIC: Challenges in the Wild.
Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2023 (IMC ‘23), Oct 24 - Oct 26, 2023, Montreal, Canada. October 2023.
Instant Messaging Meets Video Conferencing: Studying the Performance of IM Video Calls.
Proceedings of the 7th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA ‘23), Jun 26 - Jun 29, 2023, Naples, Italy. June 2023.
Evolving the Digital Industrial Infrastructure for Production: Steps Taken and the Road Ahead.
Internet of Production: Fundamentals.
Interdisciplinary Excellence Accelerator Series. February 2023.
Model-Based Controlling Approaches for Manufacturing Processes.
Internet of Production. February 2023.
Modular Control and Services to Operate Line-less Mobile Assembly Systems.
Internet of Production: Fundamentals. February 2023.
Evolving the End-to-End Transport Layer in Times of Emerging Computing In The Network (COIN).
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on New IP and Beyond, Lexington, Kentucky, USA, co-located with the 30th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP '22). November 2022.
Analyzing the Influence of Resource Prioritization on HTTP/3 HOL Blocking and Performance.
Proceedings of the Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA ‘22), Jun 27 - Jun 30, 2022, Enschede, Netherlands. June 2022.
A Computer Science Perspective on Digital Transformation in Production.
ACM Transactions on Internet of Things, vol. 3, no. 2. May 2022.
Collaboration is not Evil: A Systematic Look at Security Research for Industrial Use.
Proceedings of the Workshop on Learning from Authoritative Security Experiment Results (LASER ‘20), Dec 8, 2020, Austin, TX, USA, co-located with the 36th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '20). December 2021.
Tracking the QUIC Spin Bit on Tofino.
Proceedings of the 2021 Workshop on Evolution, Performance and Interoperability of QUIC (EPIQ ‘21), Dec 7, 2021, Virtual Event Germany, co-located with the The 17th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT '21). December 2021.
L, Q, R, and T - Which Spin Bit Cousin Is Here to Stay?.
ANRW ‘21: Proceedings of the Applied Networking Research Workshop, Virtual Event. July 2021.
Detecting Out-Of-Control Sensor Signals in Sheet Metal Forming using In-Network Computing.
Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE 30th International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), Jun 20 - Jun 23, 2021, Kyoto, Japan. June 2021.
Service-based Forwarding via Programmable Dataplanes.
Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing: Workshop on Semantic Addressing and Routing for Future Networks (SARNET-21), Paris, France, co-located with the 22nd IEEE International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing (HSPR '21). June 2021.
Holarchy for Line-less Mobile Assembly Systems Operation in the Context of the Internet of Production.
Proceedings of the 14th CIRP Conference on Intelligent Computation in Manufacturing Engineering (ICME ‘20), vol. 99, Jul 14 - Jul 17, 2020, Gulf of Naples, Italy. May 2021.
Investigating the Applicability of In-Network Computing to Industrial Scenarios.
Proceedings of the 2021 4th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS ‘21), May 10 - May 12, 2021, Victoria, BC, Canada. May 2021.
Tofino + P4: A Strong Compound for AQM on High-Speed Networks?.
Proceedings of the 2021 IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM ‘21), May 17 - May 21, 2021, Virtual Event. May 2021.
Video Conferencing and Flow-Rate Fairness: A First Look at Zoom and the Impact of Flow-Queuing AQM.
Passive and Active Measurement.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 12671.
Presented at the 22nd Annual International Conference on Passive and Active Measurement
(PAM '21), Mar 29 - Apr 1, 2021. March 2021.
Stamping Process Modelling in an Internet of Production.
Procedia Manufacturing, vol. 49.
Presented at the 8th International Conference on Through-Life Engineering Service
(TESConf '19), Oct 27 - Oct 29, 2019, Cleveland, OH, USA. July 2020.
Study on weld seam geometry control for connected gas metal arc welding systems.
Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots, Jun 22 - Jun 26, 2020, Kyoto, Japan. June 2020.
Congestion Control in the Wild - Investigating Content Provider Fairness.
IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, vol. 17, no. 2. December 2019.
Towards Executing Computer Vision Functionality on Programmable Network Devices.
Proceedings of the 1st ACM CoNEXT Workshop on Emerging in-Network Computing Paradigms (ENCP ‘19), Dec 9, 2019, Orlando, FL, United States. December 2019.
An Empirical View on Content Provider Fairness.
Proceedings of the Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA ‘19), Jun 19 - Jun 21, 2019, Paris, France. June 2019.
TCP’s Initial Window – Deployment in the Wild and its Impact on Performance.
IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, vol. 16, no. 2. January 2019.
BLOOM: BLoom filter based Oblivious Outsourced Matchings.
BMC Medical Genomics, vol. 10, no. Suppl 2.
Presented at the 5th iDASH Privacy and Security Workshop, Nov 11, 2016, Chicago, IL, USA. July 2017.
IRTF Contributions
Please have a look at my IETF datatracker profile for more information.
Use Cases for In-Network Computing.
RFC 9817, Internet Research Task Force. August 2025.
Use Case Analysis for Computing in the Network.
Internet-Draft, Internet Research Task Force. December 2024.
Terminology for Computing in the Network.
Internet-Draft, Internet Research Task Force. July 2023.
Transport Protocol Issues of In-Network Computing Systems.
Internet-Draft, Internet Research Task Force. October 2021.
Teaching Activities
I am/have been involved in the following teaching activities at RWTH Aachen University:
- Advised 31+ Bachelor/Master theses (see below for a full list)
- Co-conceptualized and supervised (3x) our Master-level Practical Internet eXperience (PIX) lab
- Advised one team project
- Co-organized and led our Research Focus Class on In-Network Processing (Master)
- Advised 33+ topics in our Proseminar / Seminar courses
- Co-responsible for the assignments in the following lectures
- Betriebssysteme und Systemsoftware (Bachelor): SS 2021
- Advanced Internet Technology (Bachelor/Master): WS 2019/20
Advised Theses
Please note that ongoing theses are only visible from within the RWTH network. If you are not affiliated with RWTH Aachen University and you are interested in our topics, please contact us.
A Topic in Traffic Engineering
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, November 2025
Advisors:
,
Liam Tirpitz (DSMA),
Benedikt Bode
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Sandra Geisler (DSMA)
Investigating the Suitability of Image-Based Safety Mechanisms for Robot Control
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, September 2025
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Stefan Kowalewski (i11)
Evaluating the Interaction of Congestion Control and Active Queue Management in Modern High-Speed Networks
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, February 2025
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Stefan Kowalewski (i11)
Investigating Performance and Privacy Implications of QUIC-based Multi-Hop MASQUE
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, September 2024
Advisors:
Mirja Kühlewind (Ericsson),
Constantin Sander,
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Ulrike Meyer (IT-Sec)
Investigating the Stack-Specific Behavior of QUIC's Spin Bit
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, September 2024
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Thomas Noll (i2)
Leveraging TCP Semantics for Flow Performance Measurements on Tofino
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, January 2024
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Ulrike Meyer (IT-Sec)
Analysing and Improving the Assessment and Classification of SpinTrap for Speeding Unresponsive QUIC Flows
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, November 2023
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Ulrike Meyer (IT-Sec)
Executing Data Stream Processing Operators on Programmable Switches
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, September 2023
Advisors:
,
Liam Tirpitz (DSMA)
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Sandra Geisler (DSMA)
ReCombined: Reuse and Combination of Existing Internet Measurement Data
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, August 2023
Advisors:
,
Markus Dahlmanns
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Ulrike Meyer (IT-Sec)
Comparison of Quicv1 and TCP network performance characteristics using ns3
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, July 2023
Advisors:
Constantin Sander,
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Ulrike Meyer (IT-Sec)
Investigating Machine Learning Techniques for Network Error Classification Using Explicit Measurement Bits
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, January 2023
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Bastian Leibe (Computer Vision)
Analyzing the Impact of In-Network Data Pre-Processing on Post-Factum Analyses in Industrial Environments
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, January 2023
Advisors:
René Glebke,
,
Philipp Niemietz (WZL)
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Thomas Bergs (WZL)
Traffic Ahead: Basing Internet Routing Decisions on Cross-Domain Insights
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, January 2023
Advisors:
,
Justus Breyer
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Martin Grohe (i7)
ECN in the Modern Internet: Capabilities, Usage and Impairments
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, November 2022
Advisors:
Constantin Sander,
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Ulrike Meyer (IT-Sec)
Investigating the Congestion Control Behaviour of QUIC Implementations Using Packetdrill
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, October 2022
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Simon Völker (i10)
Network Failure Detection and Localization using Explicit Flow Measurements
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, September 2022
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Peter Rossmanith (TCS)FOLKS Award for the best Bachelor's theses in 2022
Multi-Class AQM - Using Explicit Flow Measurements for Traffic Classification
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, August 2022
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Stefan Kowalewski (i11)
Investigating QUIC Configurations in the Wild
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, July 2022
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Ulrike Meyer (IT-Sec)
Investigating Congestion Control Traits of Mobile Video Conferencing Applications
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, April 2022
Advisors:
Constantin Sander,
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Ulrike Meyer (IT-Sec)
Analysing the Impact of In-Network Image Data Processing on Mobile Robot Control
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, February 2022
Advisors:
René Glebke,
,
Amir Shahidi (IGMR)
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Burkhard Corves (IGMR)
Passively Observing Loss-focused Explicit Flow Measurements on a P4 Switch
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, January 2022
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Walter Unger (i1)
QoS Meets Network Slicing for Inter-Domain Guarantees
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, December 2021
Advisors:
Jan Rüth,
,
Daniel Kopp (DE-CIX R&D)
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Ulrike Meyer (IT-Sec)
Pattern Discovery and Anomaly Detection in Signal Profile using Hierarchical Tree Structure
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, May 2021
Advisors:
Philipp Niemietz (WZL),
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Thomas Bergs (WZL)
Investigating Network Telemetry on the Data Plane based on QUIC Alternate-Marking Schemes
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, January 2021
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Matthias Müller (i12)
Exploring In-Session Congestion Control Algorithm Switching -- Adapting Congestion Control to Changing Conditions And Requirements
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, November 2020
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Bernhard Rumpe (i3)
Analyzing the Performance Impacts of PIE Parameterizations
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, October 2020
Advisor:
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Erika Ábrahám (i2)
Scalable Wireless Communication for Factory Automation
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, May 2020
Advisors:
Martin Serror,
Marius Wenning (WZL),
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Horst Lichter (SWC)
Enabling Anycast-based Industrial In-Network Control in 802.11 Networks
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, March 2020
Advisors:
René Glebke,
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Elisabeth Clausen (AMT)
Investigating Active Queue Management in Hardware
Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, February 2020
Advisors:
,
Jan Rüth
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Matthias Jarke (i5)
On the Applicability of In-Network Devices for Algorithm Processing
Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, August 2019
Advisors:
René Glebke,
Examiners:
Klaus Wehrle,
Jürgen Giesl (LuFG i2)